


Partners in (Stopping) Crime

by GuardianLioness



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: 3rd person, Best Friends, Friendship, Gen, In Which Ned and Peter Work Together, One Shot, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Pre-Infinity War, guy in the chair - Freeform, ride or die friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 07:23:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianLioness/pseuds/GuardianLioness
Summary: Peter needs to stop fighting villains whose powers can mimic an EMP when wearing the suit Mr. Stark made him. Fortunately, he's got a best friend that won't leave him hanging.Ned is unfortunately picking up Spider-Man's Superhero Luck — the kind that puts him in the wrong place at exactly the right time. At least being the Guy In The Chair means he's not doing it all on his own.Or: Peter and Ned are a force to be reckoned with.





	Partners in (Stopping) Crime

**Author's Note:**

> Originally penned for the [Bromance Zine](https://bromance-zine.tumblr.com)!

 

Peter let out a ragged breath as he hung in empty space. He was tethered by a single web line that twined around his leg, swaying in the wind and fighting back gasp of panic. Heights didn’t usually faze him. They were much more of a problem, however, when a system crash rendered the Stark-built Spidey suit inoperable. That’s what he got for switching to digital.

In an unusual subversion of the typical Parker luck, Peter had been able to wrap the last available shot around his ankle and avoid becoming a Spider-themed splat on the sidewalk, but that left him with a new problem. The fiber was strong, but it might not hold if he started swinging, pendulum-style, to reach the closest skyscraper. 

He bit his lip and tensed, inching his way upward to grab the line. When he’d almost righted himself, a flash of blue swept across the HUD on the suit’s eye lenses. A second later, the icons and targeting system reappeared, overlaid on the backdrop of the Queens skyline.

“Peter? Peter, please tell me you’re still there.” Choppy but distinct, Ned’s voice crackled through the comms built into the mask.

“Ned? Is that you?” Peter flicked his wrist, and the webshooter sparked to life, hooking another line on the nearest skyscraper. He untangled his foot and swung forward, tacking his hands to the glass as he reached the windowpane.

“I just have to say, as your guy in the chair, I really think you need to stay away from villains with EMPs. Mr. Stark’s suit is good, but it isn’t that good. It takes way too long to do a remote reboot.”

Peter flipped back, and letting gravity build his momentum, launched into another arcing swing.  “I can’t control what the supervillains do with their powers! They’re crazy! Wait, you rebooted the suit?”  

“Guy in the chair, man. That’s my job.”

“But,” he frowned, readjusting his trajectory to slip through a narrow side street, “only Mr. Stark and I can do that.” 

“Only you and Mr. Stark have the computer permissions to do it.”

That brought Peter to a screeching halt, braced against a wall. “Wait, you hacked the suit?”

Ned let out a short scoff. “No. I’d need to actually connect to the suit itself to do that, and the network connection is pretty secure. Oh, and you should keep moving. Sensors say the villain’s heading toward the Queensboro bridge.”

“My credentials only work in the suit!” 

“Yes, Peter. What kind of headset guy would I be if I didn’t know that?”

Biting back a growl, he pushed into the air again as Karen automatically pulled up a route calculation for the fastest path to the bridge. “Ned, please don’t tell me you hacked Stark Industries.”

“As your mission control, it’s my responsibility that you get the most accurate information possible.” Ned’s voice rang with effortless confidence. “So I — ”

“You hacked Stark Industries,” Peter groaned.

“If Mr. Stark sent you out here to catch villains, he would want you to have the best intel!”

The trail of debris and chaos that was left in the villain’s wake was sobering. Patches of molten tarmac glowed cherry red from residual heat. Fragments of glass and metal formed a gleaming mosaic across the remaining road. 

Peter swung forward, nose wrinkling at the stench of burning tar and rubber. Sirens blared in the distance. The fire department and police would be able to handle the search and rescue in the area. Peter had to take the maniac down before he carved an even bigger gash into the face of the city.

“Ned, where are you now?” 

There were a couple of ways Peter could think of for someone to compromise Stark Industries’ internal network, and each would provide different access to information. And though Peter was very much not “Team Hack Iron Man’s Databases,” they did need intel, and Mr. Stark would have the most accurate, detailed data. A remote hack, while effective for database access, wouldn't bypass the required security measures to reboot Peter's suit and webshooters.

Ned's voice was slow and measured, like he knew just what he was doing to Peter's blood pressure and thought that maybe he could calm him down. "...Stark Industries' data center in Brooklyn."

"What?! Ned, you broke into the data center? How?"

"I may have left school right after you did and spoofed the RFID chip on your ID." 

"My ID has data center access?" Huh. That was new. At least, new to him.

"I mean, I figured it would. You're like Mr. Stark's protege, right? His apprentice at least. Anyway, it worked. But man, I should've grabbed my sweatshirt on the way out. it's really cold in here. Whatever they're using to cool their servers is legit." 

Peter let out a nervous laugh. Kinda? Maybe? The English language didn't really have a word for a not-quite-friend who gave you multi-million dollar tech, yelled at you, and couldn’t decide if you should be in mortal danger or not.

So that explained Ned's break-in. It didn't explain how Ned could reach Brooklyn on foot before Peter web-slung his way to the Queensboro Bridge. Their school in Midtown was definitely closer to the Stark Industries data center than their neighborhoods in Queens, but no subway — or taxi — could beat Peter's as-the-spider-swings path over the rooftops.

There was a huffing, static noise on the comm as Ned inhaled. "I also might have used the transport tunnels Mr. Stark installed underneath the subway."

"Transport tunnels? Since when does Mr. Stark have transport tunnels?"

"You'd be amazed at what you find if you can retrieve data. Oh, by the way, you should tell Mr. Stark that some of the Brooklyn systems are open to SQL injection attacks. Some of his techs are seriously under-qualified."

Peter's stomach lurched, the back of his neck prickled, something was  _ wrong _ — He double-tapped the webshooter sensor to disengage from the current line and plummeted, narrowly avoiding a burst of electricity like the one that had first wiped his suit systems.

Ned hummed. "I can't get to your suit AI yet, and I'm kind of in the middle of another hack. Can you ask her to run thermal imaging on Shocker over there?"

Wrists flicking to throw out another strand of webbing, Peter rolled his eyes. "Nah, the Shocker's a different dude. He's got a gauntlet. This is a new guy." He grunted, straining to pull himself forward. "Karen, run a thermal imaging scan on the new electro-dude. Hey! Electro! That'll work!"

"Electro?" Ned snorted as Karen sent a multicolored image of the man to Peter's lens display.

“Would you like me to forward this to your friend?”

“Yeah, yeah, go for it, Karen.” The familiar buzz of his spider-sense thrumming in the back of his head, Peter swung forward to dodge another ball of lightning. “You know what? If you could just do what Ned needs, that’d be awesome.” 

“Of course.”

“Peter! His thermal imaging is weird,” Ned’s voice hitched. “I don’t think you can touch him.”

The line under Peter’s fingers went taught as he tore himself out of a dive, braking to duck over Electro’s outstretched fist. “What?”

 “He’s like a livewire! The only place that isn’t pumping out heat is right in the middle of his torso. Solar-plexus height.”

 “Right, right, I got this.” He snapped his wrist forward, whipping around on his new tether to redirect momentum.

 

— 

 

“Ned?” A woman’s voice rang in his earpiece, and  _ dang _ , Mr. Stark’s speech tech was next level. Only Karen’s measured tone identified her as something artificial.  _ Wicked _ . How many vocal options were recorded for her? Ned’s bet would be in the low millions.

“Yes, Karen?” he said, letting out a laugh as Peter sent the electricity-empowered man flying. Being able to watch the show was a definite upside to the omnipresent video cameras.

 “There is a secondary warning signal on the Stark network from your position.”

 Huh. “Did I miss an alarm when I hacked in?”

 “No, it’s an external alarm. It’s likely a second security breach is taking place.” Oh. Oh crap. 

“How? What system?” If he could deactivate the programs that they were using to send false requests, he might be able to prevent them from grabbing more information than they already had.

“None of them. The alarm is tied to the breach of the physical building.” 

Like a real break-in? What happened to the security outside? Who — did this have something to do with the villain Peter was fighting a few blocks away?

“Karen I need more intel,” he snapped. 

Ned was huddled in a corner of the server room maze, noise cancelling headphones simultaneously allowing him to hear Karen and to protect his hearing from the ear-shattering drone of thousands of computer fans whirring in concert. It was a secluded area, and he wasn’t likely to be discovered immediately, but it also meant he was effectively flying blind. 

His fingers tightened around the base of the computer, his knuckles going white. His chest was starting to constrict. This…this was bad. The center probably held information on the Avengers, and he was alone and unarmed and — 

“Interfacing with the data center now, routing camera feeds to your laptop.”

Good. Good. Okay. He could work with this.

The camera feed was black and white and grainy, and man, was he going to write a proposal to update security. It was a server farm! Used by freaking superheroes! Tony Stark should have known better! It wasn’t arc reactor physics or molecular chemistry!

There was movement on the cameras. Three men in tactical gear. The video quality was too low to make a guess as to the model of their guns, but all of them were armed, and what they were carrying didn’t look like self defense gear. Slim barrels and long frames indicated at least military grade equipment, if not SHIELD caliber.

The trio appeared to have broken the locks on the door, but the security staff weren’t visible on any of the footage feeds. Hiding, Ned hoped. It was more likely they’d just been dragged outside of camera range, but in what state?

He shuddered, and then focused on his breathing. A plan. He needed a plan.

“Karen, is this data center mic’d?” He’d been intending to check on his way out. It’d be useful if he needed to sneak back in and the security guards decided to actually do their jobs.

“Yes. Would you like to hear them?”

“Absolutely. Hey, how’s Peter doing, by the way?”

“His suit is shorting out. I am about to lose contact.”

Ned swore, flipping back to the computer window that had access to the suit terminal.

“Stream accessed,” the AI said just as he finished entering the last command in the boot sequence. A new window popped open on the screen, an audio playback bar smack dab in the middle. Adjusting his headset, he hit the button.

 

—

 

Peter gasped for air as he wheeled out of a backflip, blinking furiously as the world reoriented itself around him. “Ned, nice save!” he panted. The suit’s systems came online just in time for him to zip to the nearest building. He stood perched on its sleek, glass exterior, trying not to think about becoming a spider pancake for the second time in an afternoon.

“Ned?” Huh. No answer. Maybe the last blast shorted out his communications systems.

“Ah!” He ducked, a crackling blast of electricity bursting over his head. “Karen, status on the comms!”

“All comm arrays are online.” 

Huh. Maybe something happened to Ned’s remote access? “And the network connections?”

“Also functioning to assigned parameters.”

He groaned as he shot past the glowing villain, muscles in his arms screaming in protest as he yanked on the web line to throw himself in the opposite direction. “Then where’s Ned?”

“Ned is in the data center. He can hear you,” Karen said.

“Why can’t I hear him?”

“Ned is trying to hide.”

The metallic plates on the spider-suit’s mask clicked as they slid forward in imitation of Peter’s own narrowed eyes. “Is security after him? Oh no, don’t tell me. Mr. Stark’s there. Is he in armor,  or civvies?”

 “Peter, Mr. Stark is at a company meeting upstate. Ned’s hiding from intruders in the data center.”

Cold adrenaline shot through his veins. The constant, anxious buzz of his spider sense spiked, and he flinched, not knowing if the warning was for himself or for Ned. “Wait, wait, someone’s broken into the center? Is he safe? Karen, is he okay?”

“He’s hidden for now, but there are three gunmen searching the facility.” 

A curse hissed between Peter’s teeth. “Get me the fastest route,” he said, turning back to fire another shot at Electro. The burst exploded across the man’s face with a sizzling sound as the web compound met with the man’s burning, electrified flesh.

“Right.” A map lit up on the display on the lenses and Peter dove into open air.

 

—

 

Wide-eyed, Ned peered between the gaps in the server racks. 

He’d only been listening in for a moment when the gunmen shattered the locks on the doors, sending splinters of metal skidding across the refrigerated room. 

Now, they stood between him and the exit.

Their boots clicked against the cooled floor.

”Figure out what box we're taking yet?" one of them snapped. 

"There are petabytes of data in here. You’ve got to give the algorithm time."

"We don't have time!” 

Oh. Oh crap. They were getting closer. Ned shifted slowly, pressing his back to the nearest cabinet. Teeth dug into his lower lip. Was Peter okay? The laptop was out of reach, folded and stowed in his bag so that Ned could move. If the Spider suit had gone offline again — 

"Hello Ned." 

He jolted at the voice, somehow miraculously missing the cabinet edge in his jump of surprise. Karen. Oh man. She must have connected to the headphones’ Bluetooth.

"Ned, I've pointed the center's cameras in your direction. I can read your lips if you need to communicate with me."

Ned's first thought was that someone officially needed to stop Tony Stark from building hyper-competent artificial intelligences. Ned's second thought was that, if all of the Stark AIs could do that, it was a serious breach of privacy. His third thought, though, was closer to "Oh, thank  _ Thor _ ."

_ Peter? _ he mouthed, sweaty palms drawing into fists at his sides.

"On his way. Electro is following."

Well, frick. An electricity-powered villain in a room with thousands of servers?  _ What kind of drives in the data center computers? _

"The servers have solid-state drives."

Solid-state drives. As in, electrically charged drives. Drives that would completely fail in the case of a significant power surge. Fantastic.

_ What’s on the servers? _ The black-ops looking guys had to be here for a reason.

“They’re probably here for tracking information. Mr. Stark stores suit and profile data here, in addition to the movements of Captain Rogers’ rogue Avengers.”

Of freaking course.  _ Peter’s identity? _

“Unfortunately, I believe so. I, however, am stored in a different facility. Mr. Stark was quite adamant we avoid a repeat of the Ultron incident.” 

That was something to be grateful for. Ned shifted slightly, eyeing his backpack. It wasn’t zipped shut. Maybe there was some sort of crash feature embedded in the servers. Something that would send a chain reaction, up the data encryption, even fry the computers to destroy the data. He reached out, edging closer — 

“Eyes up!” the man closest to the door barked. “Movement at 11.”

Ned froze. 

Footsteps clicked forward, drawing closer. 

_ Karen, help— _

His eyes squeezed shut. The footsteps stopped. When Ned looked up, he was staring down the barrel of a gun.

 

—

 

The air around Peter thrummed with static. He vaulted forward, slipping away from the bolts of energy Electro tossed in his direction.

“Ned is in danger.” Karen’s voice was drawn taut. “Peter, hurry.”

No. Nonono, not Ned, he couldn’t lose Ned.

He crested a row of buildings, Electro still in hot pursuit. The Stark Industries facility appeared on the other side of the street. It was a sleek, modern building, cut with chrome lines and glass panels.

Perfect.

Glass shattered with an explosive crash as he plowed into the front window.

A cry of pain rang out behind him, but Peter didn’t stop. He hurtled past the vacant front desk toward the doors near the back. They were hanging open, the electronic lock left shattered.

No, no, Ned, please — 

He tore into the room, weaving between row after row of stacked servers “Karen!”

“Left, then another right.”

Rounding the corner, he had a split-second to comprehend the sight in front of him. Three men, all armed. Ned, pressed up against a rack of servers, his left hand tangled in the trailing cables at the cabinet’s side. A gun, angled directly at Ned’s head.

“Hey!” Peter barked, and a laser sight focused in his direction.

Okay, okay, he could do this. One gun on Ned, one gun on him. The third man’s head was bowed, focused on an electronic tablet in his hands.

“Spider-man!” Ned’s fingers tensed, curling around the cords. “There’s Avengers data here!”

Peter bit back a curse. Ned needed to stop talking, or he was going to get himself shot.

Wait. Avengers data. That was what Mr. Stark was keeping? And the man with the tablet hadn’t looked up. He was still going through with the hack. 

Which meant he was close to succeeding. 

Crap.

Ned first. He had to get to Ned first, then he could deal with the data-thief.

The prickle and twist of the spider-sense singing in the back of his mind, Peter lunged for Ned’s captor, blasting the barrel of the gun with a high-velocity web shot. The spider-sense spiked, a cry of panic in his head, and Peter jumped back—

The sound of scraping metal and a booming crash rang out as the spider-sense fell quiet.

Ned’s captor was unresponsive on the floor in front of Peter. The gun had flown back and was anchored to the wall by hardened web fluid. The second gunman was facedown on the ground, pinned by a collapsed server cabinet. Computers with shattered cases spilled out around him.

Curled up a few feet away was Ned, trembling, a bunch of cables caught in a viselike grip. The cables had been pulled violently, hooking on the edge of the shelf to bring the piece of furniture down. They’d been ripped free from their sockets in the process. Peter watched in shock as his friend nervously set down the mass of wires. 

“Sorry.” Ned swallowed, edging back. “I really didn’t want that guy to shoot you.”

“No, no, you’re fine.” Peter reached out a hand to help Ned up, but a tremor of panic rushed down his spine.

They forgot about the third guy. 

Clinging to the tablet in one arm, he brandished a pistol in his other hand. “Don’t move, Spider,” the man said, his voice tense and low and thick with the same anxiety that thrummed in Peter’s veins. “I don’t want to shoot your friend if I don’t have to.”

 

—

 

Ned tightened his fists to keep his hands from trembling. Another gun shoved in his face was honestly not that shocking after the day he’d had already. What bothered him was that, from his position on the floor and the angle of the tablet, he could see that the man’s search algorithm was still running. 

Peter froze at the command, the lenses on the suit mask widening.

“Alright, Spider. Here’s how we’re going to proceed.” The hair on the back of Ned’s neck prickled as his eyes darted first from the tablet, then to the man’s expressionless face. “We’re going to wait until I’ve found what I’m looking for, and then you two are both going to leave.”

Ah. So he wasn’t one of the completely insane flavors of criminal. That made things harder. It meant that he was probably thinking his plans through.

The tension in the air escalated, static and tense,  _ electric _ . He could feel it building as he shifted. If they got what they wanted, if they got data from Peter’s suit, it would be so  _ easy _ to figure out his identity.

Peter’s head lifted, just slightly, like flinching. Ned’s gaze drifted upward, until he was looking back toward the entrance of the room. Sparks flickered around the doorway.

He inhaled.

“Karen! Disable the building’s surge protection!”

“Disabling.”

“What—” Peter started, just as the gunman’s mouth parted in a snarl, and then a bolt of lightning  tore through the air, igniting the row computers to their left.

Scrambling to his feet, Ned threw himself past the gunman as Electro surged into the room, his body cracking and hissing with flickers of electricity. Peter struck, once, twice, knocking the gunman’s pistol and tablet to the ground, then slammed a fist into his jaw.

As the hacker dropped, he pivoted to face Electro.

Ned scooped up his backpack and ducked around the corner, making a beeline for the door. Getting out of the way meant that Peter could cut loose. Even better, with surge protections disabled, the villain’s powers would brick every computer in the room. 

Peter’s identity would remain a secret.

 

—

 

Enemies incapacitated, Peter slumped to the hallway floor next to Ned, sighed, and then leaned against his friend’s shoulder. He still felt charged, the clingy sensation of static running down the palms of his gloves. 

“Dude, you’re poking me,” Ned muttered. Peter glanced down. Oh. There was a pretty big shard of glass sticking out of the weave of his suit. He plucked it from the mesh, watching as the self-healing fabric sealed around the cut.

Their moment of exhaustion was quickly interrupted, however, by a high-pitched whine. Peter straightened, and Ned shoot him a look of concern. A second later, Iron Man strode into the hallway, repulsor raised.

After an uncomfortable beat of silence, Tony Stark’s voice crackled through the suit speakers. “Kid?”

“Hey, Mr. Stark.” Peter waved, wincing at the hesitant hitch in his tone.

“Spider-Man, who is this? And why is Karen telling me that most of the drives in my data center have been fried?” 

Mr. Stark did not, in any way, sound sorry. “This is Ned? My best friend?”

The faceplate on the armor retracted, revealing Mr. Stark’s grim face. “He knows?”

“Yeah. Happy didn’t tell you?” Ned  _ had _ called Happy back during the Vulture incident.

Mr. Stark lowered his arm, and the white glow faded from the palm gauntlet. “What’s your deal?” he said, fixing Ned with a piercing stare.

“I’m Spider-Man’s guy in the chair,” he said.

“His what?”

“You know, his earpiece guy? The one with the cameras?” Digging around in the backpack at his feet, Ned drew out his sticker-covered laptop and flipped it open to show open terminals, maps, and a desktop sticky-note with a list of gathered intel.

The Iron Man armor whirring as he reached down to take the computer, Mr. Stark scrutinized the screen for a few seconds. “You hacked my tech.”

“To help Pet — Spider-man, yeah.” Ned’s brow furrowed. 

“But you hacked it? How far into the systems?”

“He rebooted my suit, Mr. Stark,” Peter cut in.

“Rebooted? Your credentials only work from inside the suit.” He waved dismissively. “How’d you get around that?”

“Ned didn’t use my credentials,” Peter said slowly.

“…You hacked  _ my _ remote access?” The look of utter shock on Mr. Stark’s face made Peter wince. “The highly encrypted, highly secure remote access that I  _ coded myself _ ?”

“Sorry, Mr. Stark, but Peter was about to fall, and — ” Ned clutched at his backpack.

Mr. Stark sighed, his shoulders relaxing, and massaged the bridge of his nose while he passed the computer back. “You know what, fine. I won’t even ask why my data went up in flames. Yet. Tomorrow, you’re both showing up to the Manhattan office after school, where you’re gonna give Happy a full report. Understand?”

Peter nodded, and Ned, seeing the relief in Peter’s stance, copied him. “Right,” he said, loading his laptop in the bag with his schoolbooks. “Right. I can put together my recommendations tonight and bring them with me.”

“Recommendations?” The Iron Man armor began to retract from his frame, nanotech creeping back into the housing on his chest. He slipped on a pair of sunglasses, pulling them down on his nose just to glare at Ned over them.

“Oh, uh,” Ned fidgeted for a second. “Some security recommendations? This place wasn’t exactly protected. I could’ve gotten in with an SQL injection.”

Mr. Stark blinked, his lip curling into a subtle frown. “Alright, kid. Write it up and we’ll see what you’ve got.” The man turned, pulling out a Starkphone, and headed for the front room. 

Ned took the moment as a sign to zip up his backpack and put it on, but Peter’s heightened sense of hearing still picked up on the phone conversation. “Yeah, I’m going to need another internship paperwork packet in my office by tomorrow. Yes, with the non-disclosure agreement. And schedule an appointment with the data center admins.”

Peter hopped to his feet. “Time to head home?”

“Yeah,” Ned breathed. “Yeah, that was…a lot. Though, not too much for Spider-Man’s tech support.”

“Of course not,” Peter grinned beneath the mask. “You’ve got this.  _ We _ ’ _ ve _ got this.” 

“Exactly. And we’ve got tomorrow too.”

Slipping past Mr. Stark, shattered glass crunching under their feet, they stopped at the door to run through their handshake before stepping back out into the world.

 


End file.
